Dani Shapiro: How Writing Fiction Can Expose More of Yourself Than Writing Memoir

Signal Fires is Dani Shapiro’s first novels in fifteen years, and has everything most of us want in fiction: indelible characters, a book we can’t put down, and the ability to provoke how we think about our lives by understanding of their lives. She joins Roxanne Coady for a live conversation held at RJ Julia Booksellers. Dani Shapiro is a best-selling novelist and memoirist and host of the podcast Family Secrets (now in its seventh season). Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, and Time. She has taught at Columbia and New York University and is the co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference. She lives in Litchfield County, Connecticut. Roxanne Coady is owner of R.J. Julia, one of the leading independent booksellers in the United States, which—since 1990—has been a community resource not only for books, but for the exchange of ideas. In 1998, Coady founded Read To Grow, which provides books for newborns and children and encourages parents to read to their children from birth. RTG has distributed over 1.5 million books.